Jonathan Meiburg. A Most Remarkable Creature. Knopf, 2021.

A Most Remarkable Creature is another new book about a special group of birds, in this case, the caracaras. Caracaras are predators found in Latin America. In the United States they are normally only found in Texas and Florida, although there are some indications their range may be expanding northward.

While there are a number of species in this family, much of the book is taken up with perhaps the most distinctive or remarkable member of this group, the Striated Caracara. This species is found at the southern end of South America and on the islands to its south, notably the Falklands.

Here we discover two things that distinguish caracaras from nearly all other species of predatory birds, be they hawks, kites, owls, or falcons. They are social. Not just that they flock together as we sometimes see vultures because they have found a bounty of food. They interact with each other and with other creatures in their environment.

They observe and learn new things. They also are generalists when it comes to food. They hunt as other hawks do. They eat carrion as do vultures. They also eat other things that provide nutrition. One species of caracara specializes in wasp larvae—it was long a mystery how they could raid a wasp nest and not get stung. If a human had tried to dislodge a five-foot wasp nest, he probably would have died from the stings unless he were dressed like a beekeeper.

We also learn a lot about William H. Hudson, a writer from the early twentieth century who was one of the first to admire caracaras rather than find them repellent. He is best known today for a couple of novels including Green Mansions. I have never read that novel, but I recall my father owning a copy of it when I was a boy. It is set in South America, where Hudson grew up and observed the wildlife there.

If anyone has been to South America, one may notice that there are no crows there. Indeed, the only South American jays are rarely seen jungle birds. In the cities forests, plains, and beaches of South America, the Black Vulture and Caracara fill the crows’ niche. In Brazil or Argentina, for example, one sees vultures and caracaras picking through garbage and roadkill not far from people .

While a portion of Meiburg’s book includes some evolutionary speculation as to why this is so, most of it simply describes some of the fascinating behavior of caracaras. He tells, for example, how a couple of the smaller, uninhabited Falkland Islands were purchased by a British millionaire who had an aviary in England that included a Striated Caracara. Now they are a wildlife preserve, not only for these hawks but for many seabirds, penguins, seals, and even a few Peregrine Falcons.

After reading this book, one comes away thinking that these birds may be among some of the most intelligent birds on the planet. The only bird that the author thinks might compete for the title is the African Grey Parrot. Most predatory birds specialize in habitat, food, hunting style, or some combination. Many of the caracara species are generalists, though different species tend to be found in varying habitats. Sometimes they hunt, sometimes they scavenge, and most of them are simply curious.

We are introduced to the Striated Caracara from the story of a British falconer who obtained one. Usually falcons and hawks are not really “trained,” they simply are taught to rely on a human trainer for obtaining food, even if it is hunting in the instinctive manner of the species. The first thing that happened with the caracara was that the bird stole the falconer’s keyring! It was clowning around. Perhaps a tamed crow or parrot might do something similar, but here was a new hawk with a stranger. We know right away that this kind of bird is going to be different.

This, along with with the writing of Hudson and a visit to the Falklands, got the author interested in these unique birds. We are taken from the Falklands to islands in Drake’s Passage, Argentina, Guiana, and even Florida to discover these avian characters. If nothing else, A Most Remarkable Creature should give most of us a new appreciation for a type of bird that is often overlooked, not to mention author Hudson, also mostly overlooked these days.

Jon Dunn. The Glitter in the Green. Basic, 2021.

The Glitter in the Green is subtitled In Search of Hummingbirds. Author Dunn describes a long trip from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego focused on hummingbirds. Like many other people, Englishman Dunn became fascinated with these tiny and usually sparkling birds.

He tells us at the beginning that he is looking for some extremes. Though hummingbirds are high-energy nectar eaters, some live on the ecological edge of survival. He wanted to see the northernmost hummer, the Rufous Hummingbird at the northern edge of its range in Alaska. He would finish by finding a hummingbird that is sometimes seen in the snows of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.

In between, he would go to famous hummingbird spots in Arizona, Costa Rica, Peru, and Brazil. He visits Cuba, even though he mentions only two hummingbirds native there, because its Bee Hummingbird is the world’s smallest bird at a little over two inches long. In the Andes he sees a Giant Hummingbird, the world’s largest, at nearly seven inches long. Unlike smaller hummers, he can actually see the bird’s wings as it flies and hovers.

There are over three hundred species of hummingbirds, all in the New World. Dunn tells us that he is not trying to see all of them—he confesses to not keeping lists. Still he shares with us a representative sample of the birds and the impressions they make.

Specific types are not always easy to find. In many cases the rain forest or montane environment makes any kind of travel difficult. He spent one night in Bolivia but had to leave because of riots. Some of the hummers he just wanted to see because they were distinctive in other ways.

The spatuletails are tiny birds with two almost invisible tail shafts that end with a “spatula.” Another type is the puffleg with what look like tiny pom-poms over its feet. There are sickelbills and the swordbills. Many of the names are imaginative, coming from jewelry or fantasy tales. Birds called emeralds or amethysts are types of hummingbirds.

Dunn makes us aware of the problems some of the hummingbirds have with survival. In Mexico and Peru hummingbird parts are sold as love potions and medicines not unlike rhino horn or tiger bones. Deforestation in some places has eliminated many plants that hummingbirds rely on for food. However, some places are learning that they can add as much or more to the economy through eco-tourism and promoting hummingbird conservation.

Dunn tells us that he has lived much of his adult life on a remote Shetland Island. His writing really resonates when he visits Juan Fernandez Island 400 miles off the coast of Chile, now known as Isla de Robinson Crusoe. It was here that Alexander Selkirk was marooned for over four years to survive and return to England. His experience inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe.

Throughout the book Dunn makes cultural and sometimes political tie-ins with his research. So we learn a little bit about Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. (I would add to his observations on Woolf that her The Voyage Out was inspired by a trip she took to Latin America where she no doubt encountered hummingbirds). Dunn seems to have liked Fidel Castro but is not sure what to make of Evo Morales. In Argentina he is warned not to let people know he is English: The Falklands War is still a sore spot there.

On the Isla de Robinson Crusoe there is now a small human settlement and a species of hummingbird that is found nowhere else. Now, many hummingbirds are sexually dimorphic, the males being more colorful or visually outstanding than plainer females. We understand this is because the females raise the young and need to be inconspicuous.

The Juan Fernandez Firecrown is sexually dimorphic, but the females are just as flamboyant looking as the males, though very different. On this remote island, there were no natural predators, so camouflage was not an issue. Alas, even when Selkirk was there in 1704, mankind had already brought rats to the island which are predators to the hummingbirds. Although there are some significant conservation measures taken on the island nowadays, Dunn is not optimistic about the Firecrown’s chances of survival.

Dunn tells us one of the challenges he has is trying to take photographs of these small, quick flyers, many of which prefer the shadows. At times he admits he was unable to photograph the birds he describes but just had to enjoy the moment. Still, The Glitter in the Green has over thirty photographs of the birds—including the hummingbird form in one of the famous Nazca geoglyphs of Peru. He was flying over it in an airplane at the time.

We also get a lot of the history of ornithologists and hummingbirds. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries scientists started seriously collecting specimens of all kinds of flora and fauna from all over the world. This included thousands of hummingbird skins that ended up in personal or museum collections.

Before that, besides traditional medicines, the uniquely glittering hummingbird feathers were used in art forms in Central America. Some survived the conquistadores and contributed to European artwork. Dunn describes an altarpiece from the sixteenth century at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London that even five centuries later still shimmers from the hummingbird feathers in its paints.

Dunn describes the multiple warnings he got from people about bears while he was in Alaska. There were definitely some challenges from weather and terrain. Still Dunn, like the hummingbird, reminded this reader of Robinson Crusoe in one other way. After Crusoe is rescued, he returns to England via Portugal and Spain. He crosses the Pyrenees where he warned about the wolves. Wolves do create a problem for him, but he confesses he is more concerned about the “two-legged” wolves he might encounter. For Dunn and his hummingbirds, those two-legged beasts can still be a problem today!

T. D. Jakes and Frank Thomas. Don’t Drop the Mic. Faith Words, 2021.

We have reviewed another book by Rev. Jakes here, so we will not provide any background to his ministry here. We can say with assurance, though, that this book is very different.

I am not sure exactly when the diminutive for microphone changed its spelling. For example, the autobiography of popular sportscaster Curt Gowdy was called Cowboy at the Mike. That is more phonetic, certainly. Nowadays, I guess, we write mic even though one might be tempted to say “mick.”

Now that I have that out of the way, Don’t Drop the Mic is a very good primer on public speaking. Towards the end, it focuses on preaching more, but even then, most of what Jakes and Thomas present are helpful for anyone doing public speaking.

Through most of the book, Jakes intersperses his instruction with stories and examples. Until the end, most of the examples are from public figures, not preachers or Christians. He speaks of Denzel Washington, President Obama, and someone called Oprah a number of times. We can learn from each of them.

He understands nervousness, that surveys have shown people are more afraid of public speaking than creepy animals or even dying. Jakes confesses he hates spiders more. The title is typical of his sense of humor. Even here, though, he says, there is a time to drop the mic, namely, when you have said all you need to say. In other words, don’t keep talking unless your are filibustering.

Jakes stresses the importance of understanding your audience. It is important to make a connection with the people you are speaking to. Jakes devotes some time talking of the recent Black Lives Matter movement. In describing his own experience and observations, readers who are not black may get a better sense of what it means to African Americans. He notes that one of the strengths of Jesus’ public ministry was that he understood the people he was sharing his work with.

He also notes how important it is to have what he calls joints. Not only should a good speaker connect with his or her audience, but the parts of the delivery must connect with one another. When I teach something similar to my students in writing classes I share a little poem I learned that makes no connections.

       Roses are red,
       Violets are blue.
       I like peanut butter.
       Can you swim?

It’s funny, but only because it is nonsense. Unless you are doing a comic routine, you do not want to come across as sharing nonsense.

He devotes chapters to body language and pauses as well. Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is that it covers the whole presentation, not just the content. That includes the character of the speaker. Jakes provides examples from personal experiences to illustrate but also to reveal things about his own character. The reader gets a sense that this man can be trusted—certainly when he writes of public speaking.

Jakes also shares something that many people seem to miss or not understand. He tells us that many of his books and articles are based on sermons or sermon series. Even his movies originated with sermons he preached. He explains that writing is significantly different from public speaking. Writing has to be grammatically sound and cannot depend on pauses, vocal stresses, and things like that. Many times we speak in sentence fragments and run-on sentences, but those can be hard to understand when reading.

The co-author, Dr. Thomas, is a seminary professor. He encouraged Jakes to write this book, to share what he has learned about public speaking and preaching. The last few chapters are attributed to Dr. Thomas. These are more specifically about preaching, but even these have examples and illustrations useful to everyone.

Will Don’t Drop the Mic replace the books by Dale Carnegie? Perhaps not, but it certainly makes a good supplement. This reviewer has been teaching for years, but this book made me consider or reconsider some of the things that I do.

One incident Jakes describes really stands out. He was asked to share with an organization that provided help to people but was looking for ways to involve more minorities. A white friend came with him to the meetings. His friend got really angry at the condescending manner which they treated Jakes. Jakes told him that it was not unusual for him as a black American. From my experience, I might add that such condescension can apply to Pentecostal Christians (which is what Jakes is) regardless of skin color.

Yes, there is a lot in Don’t Drop the Mic about public speaking. There are humorous parts. But there are also some things that may get all readers thinking. What is in our hearts? What comes through when we communicate?

Chang-Rae Lee. Aloft. Riverhead, 2004.

Aloft is the third Chang-Rae Lee novel reviewed here. All three are very different. We loved Native Speaker, so it was with a little anticipation we read Aloft.

Aloft follows the tradition of an earlier generation of writers who seemed to focus on American men in some kind of midlife crisis, usually including adultery. I could not help think of Percy, Roth, Bellow, or Updike. Indeed, one of the supporting characters in Aloft is named Coniglio, Italian for rabbit, perhaps a tip of the hat to Updike.

Jerry Battle, an almost sixty semi-retired Long Islander, narrates the story. Left a widower with two young children after his Korean-American wife apparently committed suicide, he somewhat muddles through life. He is very passive or phlegmatic, tending to just let things happen and react if he has to.

The Battle family name was originally Battaglia, and Jerry’s father grew up on the mean streets of Queens and managed to operate a successful masonry and landscaping business. Jerry will work for the family business for years and eventually will let his son Jack take over the whole thing.

The title comes from Jerry’s one expensive hobby, flying a single engine plane. He usually flies alone. His flying symbolizes his life, trying to get above everything and looking down on what is happening.

He has a relationship with the pretty and loving Rita for twenty-five years. They never marry, but she becomes basically a stepmother to Jack and his sister Theresa. Theresa comes close to an academic stereotype. An expectant mother, she wants to name her child Barthes if it is a boy. Once she analyzes something her father tells her by calling it a Lacanic imbrication.

But even Theresa, when she steps outside her academic front, comes across as somewhat sensitive and perhaps even likable.

Jerry observes his father’s occasional infidelities. Some come from his work, landscaping or building something in the yard of a lonely housewife. Jerry, we see, follows suit in a few cases. Even he recognizes that he should have married Rita, but his phlegmatic approach to life keeps him from taking the step.

As I have noted elsewhere in reflecting on the authors mentioned above, this has great stretches of somewhat boring narrative about Jerry’s escapades. He intersperses his tale with clever or humorous observations that keep the reader’s interest. For example, speaking of his class-conscious daughter-in-law and his two grandchildren, he says:

I wish sometimes she would spend more casual, horsing around time with the kids, just lollygagging, rather than scheduling the endless “enrichment” exercises and activities for them that are undoubtedly brain-expanding but must be as much fun as memorizing pi to twenty-five places. (66)

While his daughter tends to look at people as ethnic and class stereotypes, Jerry sounds at least realistic in some of his observations. When describing his father’s youth in Queens, he truly satirizes our present culture.

Pop I guess was a lot angrier then inside and out for the usual reasons of privation and poverty and general mistreatment by family members and people in the street and at school and by the authorities, which these days you’d call racism and discrimination but then was known as the breaks, how it was, your miserable [expletive] life. No doubt these days they’d have identified him and his brothers and cousins and the rest of their street-clinging crew as “at risk” youth and place them in special programs with teams of sociologists and educators and therapists evaluating their intelligence and home life and probably diagnosing them with all kinds of learning and emotional disorders and prescribing medicines and skills-building regimens, finally buoying them up with grand balloons of self-esteem that they might float high above the rank fog of their scrounging dago circumstance, to land somewhere in the sweet-smelling prosperous beyond. (288-289)

Pop managed to make it “aloft” by taking what he had and making it work. Perhaps that is enough for us all.

Aloft is not for everyone. It describes various instances of adultery and fornication with some rough language. Perhaps not as redeeming as The Moviegoer, it nevertheless does end with a certain hopeful outlook. Life is hard and then you die—those are the breaks—but we are all in this together, and that can be some consolation.

Eric Metaxas. If You Can Keep It. Viking, 2016.

Students of American history may recognize the title from a famous quotation from Benjamin Franklin. After the United States Constitutional Convention passed the Constitution and the assembly was adjourning, a woman approached Franklin and asked him, “Well, doctor, what have we got?”

He answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Metaxas’ thesis resembles that of the late Ronald Reagan: We are always one generation away from losing our liberties. But this is not a political screed. He does not take sides on most issues, no alarms about Antifa or Proud Boys. Instead, he reminds us of our history and the need to be reminded of it.

I understand this. During the 1960s I was in junior high and high school. I attended a public school system that had a very good reputation. It was “progressive” to say the least. I studied the Communist Manifesto three times in five years. I never studied anything about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The American History class I took in high school began with Reconstruction and ended with the Great Depression.

I am a reader, so I have read things by our founders since, and I am happy to teach the principles of the Declaration of Independence to my English classes. But I suspect many since the sixties have not been exposed to these things, or if they have, it is with a negative spin.

Metaxas notes the negative spin, too. Ultimately, he is an idealist. The principles enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the system provided in the Constitution, he claims, are worth preserving. No, we have not always followed them perfectly, no country has, but we can work towards them. Ideals are worth living up to even if we do not perfectly keep them.

If You Can Keep It emphasizes what Metaxas calls the miracle of self-government. The basic idea behind the American system is that good citizens are able to exercise self-control. They know what is best for themselves. They do not interfere with others’ rights and expect no one to interfere with theirs. This is has resulted in technological advances and creativity almost unparalled in history.

We note today that the more authoritarian governments, whether dictatorships or one-party rule, are derivative. What technological and personal advances they have made have been because they have imitated, borrowed, or even stolen practices and technology from the Western world, especially the United States.

Metaxas notes that in most cases, government is not meant to solve problems, but merely to provide justice and defense when needed. Very simply, as he puts it, “the government cannot force us to be good.” If there is a problem to be solved, “it must be the people—and the culture—that solves the problem.” (46) In the language of our founders, liberty works better than tyranny.

If You Can Keep It spends a good deal of time discussing George Whitefield, the itinerant evangelist who helped inspire the Great Awakening. Though Whitefield was an Englishman, he spent a lot of time going up and down the North American colonies. By the time he died in 1770, eighty percent of the colonial population had heard him speak. Though Franklin may have been coy about his own religious inclinations, Metaxas quotes the well-known passage from Franklin’s Autobiography about Whitefield and notes Franklin’s respect for what the Great Awakening accomplished.

The book reminds us of other American heroes, some well-known, others less so. We read about Washington, yes, but also Paul Revere and Nathan Hale. Why? Mostly so that we do not forget.

Metaxas spends a lot of time looking at Abraham Lincoln. He really set the tone when the country was brutally divided. We must look to “the better angels of our nature” and “the mystic chords of memory.” No, Washington and Lincoln were not perfect, but we can learn much from them. We can be grateful that we had them for leaders at critical times in our history. In other words, it is OK to have heroes.

Among other things, Metaxas cites an early speech by Lincoln, over twenty years before the Civil War, in which he said that all the armies of the world led by a Napoleon could not take a drink from the Ohio River unless we allowed them to. Let us be thankful for that and pray that it may never be.

Years ago I recall reading an article by P. J. O’Rourke. I believe it was in Rolling Stone magazine. He had visited Cuba and described life there. His conclusion was very simple: Nations into which people are trying to enter are superior to nations from which people are trying to emigrate. America may be shaking some, but it still offers hope and a model to the better angels of human nature.

Read this book. It recalls to this reviewer Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order, but it is shorter and more of a narrative. Consider the depth of what Metaxas shares. And pray, to paraphrase a review of De Tocqueville, that America will remain good. If so, it will remain great.

Deidre Reilly. The Pretend Christian. CrossLink, 2020.

The title The Pretend Christian might suggest to many of us a kind of religious hypocrite: someone who acts the part but whose life really is something else. That is not really what this book is about. It is the author’s own testimony presented in artfully written vignettes from her life.

Some chapters involve her thinking questions that all philosophers consider; for example, one chapter title is “The Problem of Evil.” Another suggests something more lighthearted: “Can Religion Cause Rashes?” Regardless of the specific incident or topic, readers should be able to empathize, if not identify, with the author.

She writes that her family attended church until she was about eight and then lapsed until she was about sixteen. In her teens, she went to a youth group party sponsored by the church. She says the kids were friendly, the couple who hosted were lovely, but someone decided to play a Bible trivia game. She was embarrassed because she knew nothing of the Bible. We get it. No one intended any harm, but she felt left out.

Another time later as an adult, she witnessed an event that was an answer to prayer and can only be described as a miracle—God overriding the natural order. (Read the book to discover it!) That proved to her that He was real, but was it enough for her to start following Him?

Each chapter presents a problem, normally a problem Mrs. Reilly faced, but one which most readers can probably relate to on some level. All the while, she is questioning God. Does He exist? Is it worth becoming a Jesus follower?

Notice even here, church language can mystify or alienate some people. I could have asked the question this way: Is is worth to become a disciple of Jesus? What does that mean? Weren’t there just twelve disciples? Is the word disciple related to discipline?

One thing stood out to this reader. Mrs. Reilly had four grandparents who were all committed Christians. She knew they were real about their faith. And she saw how loving they were. There had to be something to this belief. But what about those church scandals and embarrassments?

Not only does Reilly tell her story well, but she is aware that she might have different people in her audience. Each little story ends with two observations, one she calls for the Searcher, a person like her in much of the book who has questions and may even be turned off by Christianity. The other is for the Christian, the Bible believer who perhaps needs to see something about the way others see him or her or the way other people understand or misunderstand the faith.

We also see the importance of family in faith—not just the believing the grandparents but also others who perhaps understand some things a bit differently. By the end, the readers feel she has found her place, both in a church and, more importantly, in the Kingdom of God.

Raj Venkatesan and Jim Lecinski. The AI Marketing Canvas. Stanford UP, 2021.

This is not the usual kind of book we review, but after all, English Plus did begin as an online Software business. We wrote computer programs for SAT/ACT review and English grammar. Our programming was current for the nineties when Artificial Intelligence (AI) was in its infancy and my first PC had 640 kilobytes RAM, which was the maximum for commercially available personal computers. Now an inexpensive cellphone will have four megabytes of RAM or over six times the computing power of what I wrote the original Verbal Vanquish on.

Artificial Intelligence, especially the kind used for marketing as in The AI Canvas for Marketing, uses much more RAM and enormous degrees more of storage than the 360 Kb floppy disks I used back then. The critical component for AI is speed. Now computers can do some things so much faster than they used to, that they can compare things and see patterns they are programmed to detect, and especially they can manage huge amounts of data in almost no time

The book starts by giving some well-known examples of AI and its speed; for example, the IBM Watson computer that won at Jeopardy and beat a Go champion. This speed and ability to sort through data has made for a breakthrough in marketing.

The so-called Marketing Canvas consists of five steps or stages for a company to introduce, use, and take advantage of artificial intelligence. In fact, someone who is already familiar with AI programs could probably take a photocopy of the chart on page 93 and make a go of things.

First is the Foundation. What are you trying to market? Whom are you marketing to? How can you use AI to help your business? This often means a change in the way things are done.

Second is Experimentation. One thing this book emphasizes is that you do not have to be successful all the time. Because AI is quick, and ought to be implemented quickly, not every method will work for your business, but that is OK. Stick with what works. You learn.

For people in your company or department who are skeptical the authors say, “Challenge your internal staff to work with these [AI] specialists to apply algorithms to your clean data…Then track your results against the human-led way.” (120)

Third is Expansion. Once your group or business of whatever size learns and gets used to AI, expand it. What other uses are there? How can you make use of other approaches. For example, you may start with cookies or trackers, but find you can get more data from loyalty programs. Also there may be commercial databases that have information that is good for your business or even your nonprofit.

Fourth is Transformation. As AI begins to work, there should actually be an effective personalized approach, even if machines are doing most of the research and working for you. This includes a discussion of machine learning.

Fifth is Monetization. This, of course, requires human ingenuity and a good project or cause, but if it works, your income should increase. Even here, the authors note that success is determined by positive mathematical probabilities, not absolutes.

The authors use some hypothetical examples like a small business called Raj’s Bakery, but mostly they show how real businesses like Starbucks, CarMax, and many others have catered to customers with AI.

Ultimately, this is a how-to book. It shows and tells. There are charts, yes, and also good questions to ask as you enter into each stage. If it lacks anything, there is little on what AI programs are out there to use. It does mention ai.google which itself has a slew of possibilities. It also notes that some successful AI companies have been bought out by large corporations that have used them successfully. For example, McDonalds bought Dynamic Yield. It notes that McDonalds uses phone apps and web sites for data, but it also gets electronic data from its drive-through order screens. Some drive-through businesses note license plates rather than names to track customer preferences.

This tells me how things have changed since we were marketing our software. We were proud to note that we had no cookies or trackers on our website. We respected people’s privacy. We still do. How old fashioned! A few users do voluntarily give us email addresses, but it has been years since we have sent out an email.

Even though I no longer concern myself much with marketing since our English Plus software is largely legacy, The AI Canvas for Marketing was fascinating to read. It also helped me understand how AI can be used in other ways.

We know, especially in the last year, how social media have been censoring things. I stopped using Google as my main search engine years ago when I was looking up something innocuous about former President George W. Bush (I think I was looking for the year he was born), and the first things that popped up were all about conspiracy theories (Bush and the Illuminati) and extreme politics (Bush: War Criminal). That told me more about Google than Bush.

Two years ago a friend of mine told me Kamala Harris was going to be Joe Biden’s running mate before it was announced. How did he know? Candidate Biden had said he would choose a woman of color. My friend Googled Senator Harris, Donna Brazile, and other prominent women of color in the Democrat Party. When he clicked on the top links for Harris, all the articles and web sites said the same thing in the same words. She was being scrubbed. He knew she would be the pick.

This also explains how even the founder of Wikipedia has complained that virtually everything even on his “open” encyclopedia has certain political bias. No, it is not AI for marketing, but AI for propaganda. When Facebook or Twitter tells someone that their posting does not conform to their standard algorithm, it is not a cop-out. The algorithm has likely been programmed to flag things like “liberty” or “truth about Covid” for example. (NB: I personally am not hung up about wearing masks or getting vaccinated, but such programming stifles discussion.)

The AI Marketing Canvas boasts that the canvas helps the consumer. In one sense it does. If the AI knows you always order the same kind of coffee, mocha latte can pop up first on your phone screen. That is convenient. But if it is used to conceal facts or promote half-truths, that is censorship. Jesus said the truth will set you free (John 8:32). If something that is not threatening or pornographic needs to be censored, someone does not want you to know something. As John Milton wrote in his seminal work on freedom of speech and an press:

Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? (Areopagitica 1644)

Karl A. Bacon. An Eye for Glory. Zondervan, 2011.

I was excited to receive this book when I discovered that it is a novel about a soldier in the 14th Connecticut Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. When I teach Civil War Literature in school, I use an actual diary of a man who also served in the 14th Connecticut. The man was from Bridgeport, the state’s largest city then and now, as are many of my students. The soldier, William Hincks, would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits at Gettysburg.

An Eye for Glory gives a first person account of a Michael Palmer of Naugatuck, Connecticut, about thirty miles north of Bridgeport. It includes letters written back and forth to his wife. It follows the course of the war as was seen by the 14th Connecticut and does it very well. I am certain that Bacon used various accounts including what he could find about Hincks.

The unit formed in the summer of 1862, so it missed some of the earliest battles, but it arrived in Maryland in September in time for South Mountain and Antietam. Palmer is there and tells it as he saw it—as eyewitnesses like Hincks did see it. The author includes some helpful maps.

14th Connecticut Monument at Antietam
Palmer goes on to Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and then to Gettysburg. We get a sense of the frustration that many troops (not to mention President Lincoln) felt that their leaders were not taking advantage of situations and wasting lives.

Without giving too much away, Gettysburg changes Palmer. Not only does his side win a battle in the East, but he begins to think about what it means to kill other men. The brutal Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania come alive. He also begins to understand what it really takes to win a war as Grant takes over the army.

The end is quite moving. Some readers might be familiar with “The Artilleryman’s Vision,” a Civil War poem by Walt Whitman. It is set after the war in the home of a veteran. In so many eloquent words, the soldier dwells on the things he has seen and realizes that his wife will never understand. There is a lot of truth in that.

I have a friend whose father served on a Navy ship in World War II. His vessel saw a lot of action in the Pacific. Every five years they would have a reunion. My friend’s mother did not like the reunions because she and many of the wives felt left out. Most of the shipmates never wrote each other or kept in touch other than for the reunions, but they would pick up like they were best friends who had been together the day before.

In An Eye for Glory, there is perhaps even a little more. Today we would probably say that Palmer had PTSD. The way he deals with it is remarkable, but it helps to cure him. And the reader has no problem believing it. This is a raw, action-filled war novel, but it really gets inside the mind of the soldier. It resembles the Civil War stories of Stephen Crane but with greater scope.

I do have one quibble with the book. It mentions “The Star-Spangled Banner” being the national anthem. It did not become the national anthem until 1931. The Hincks diary, for example, names sixteen songs the band accompanying the 14th played, none were “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The one patriotic tune he mentions was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” which he calls “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.”

Palmer and his friends are fictional, but many of the other characters in the 14th Connecticut were real people. One person mentioned quite a bit is Captain, later Major, Ellis. The first few leaders of the 14th were often absent because of injuries or other reasons. One was court-martialed. Ellis eventually would lead the 14th, but even before his promotion he was often the de facto leader.

While Palmer has a Springfield rifle, he notes that the men with Sharps rifles were more effective. That was the case in the war. The Sharps rifle could be loaded quicker. It was breech loaded rather than muzzle loaded. Men with these would pair up, one loading and one firing, and together they could get off two or three shots a minute while being more alert. Some of the story may seem like exaggeration, but I have read enough to know that it is not. If anything, Bacon, through Mr. Palmer, plays the violence down. But it is based on real events, and it does them well.

Bodie Hodge. Tower of Babel. Master Books, 2012.

I happened to see a brief review of this book recently, and it sounded interesting. For the Bible scholar it is worth reading. Tower of Babel is the product of much research. While the author admits some things are speculative, the book does help put the first eleven chapters of the Bible in perspective.

A personal and general observation I have made is that those who study antiquity or early history seem to take one of two approaches. One is an archaeological approach. The other is a documentary approach. The first tends to look at physical items dug up or uncovered. The second focuses on ancient writings. For whatever reasons they are often at odds with each other.

Tower of Babel takes the documentary approach. It refers to many ancient writings from around the world with a focus on the so-called Table of Nations in Genesis chapter ten, and the genealogy of Shem in chapter eleven. In some cases, ancient Jewish writings or traditions tell us what some of these nations or founders of ethnic groups likely were. In some cases it is other sources from other cultures. In some cases it is more recent research.

Much of the story of the Tower of Babel is easy enough to imagine. After the Flood, God told people to move out and repopulate the earth. Most people stayed in Mesopotamia and rebelled against God. Their tower was their primary act of rebellion. They were scattered by God confusing the language. Then they moved out.

The reason that some of the research is speculative is simply that people have continued to move and migrate ever since. Those of us from America often have ancestors from many different countries. Today’s news tells of people migrating from Afghanistan, the Near East, and Central America. It is still happening.

Also, various nations combine, get conquered or assimilated, or conquer and assimilate others. For example, England was likely first settled by Celts, then conquered by the Angles and Saxons from Germany, and then the French-speaking Normans. All three ethnicities contribute to the British Isles historically.

Because some of the discussion has to do with which nation came from which ancestor after Babel, it gets convoluted and a bit dry in places. The overall effect, though, is one that should encourage those who see the Bible as a historical work. The footnotes are especially helpful and may provide further evidence for anyone who wants to carry on the discussion.

The author does a good job of trying to sort out which Biblical names apply. We understand this even from Jesus’ disciples. He had two disciples named Judas (Judah), two named Simon, and two named James (Jacob). In a few cases even in the older genealogies there is more than one person by the same name. Tower of Babel does a good job of trying to sort out which one is referred to not only in the Bible but in other historical texts.

An appendix illustrates this. The appendix is titled “Date of Job.” The Bible tells us Job came from the land of Uz. The Bible genealogies name two different early patriarchs named Uz. Which one is the likeliest to be the founder of Job’s homeland? It is an interesting discussion considering that Job and Ruth are the two title characters in the Hebrew Scriptures whose birth is outside of the Abrahamic covenant.

Tower of Babel also discusses Pentecost as a reversal of the curse of Babel. The book handles this commonly held theme well. It also notes, as many others do, that Babel and Babylon are the same word in Hebrew. English Bible translators tended to translate Babel when talking about the post-Flood tower and Babylon, the Greek name, for later kingdoms in the same location.

I may have missed it, but I do not recall seeing the Hebrew meaning of Babel. It literally means “gate of God.” That in itself could be a sign of rebellion—we are building this tower as the gateway to the heavens. One could say that that has been man’s problem since the Fall. Mankind has figured out many ways to supposedly get to or discover God. The question then becomes, which way is really God’s way?

Daniel Silva. The Black Widow. Harper, 2016.

The recriminations began even before the sun had risen. One party blamed the president for the calamity that had befallen America, the other blamed his predecessor. That was the only thing Washington was good at these days—recriminations and apportionment of blame. (483)

We have heard of Daniel Silva for a number of years and have read some rave reviews. Recently we had a chance to read one of his novels. His stuff may be the antidote for those of us who miss Tom Clancy.

Silva is different. The Black Widow is a spy novel. Yes, it includes things for the technodudes, but most of the conflict is mano a mano with lots of stealth. Here we begin to understand the making of a spy and the existential threat certain radicals can be not just to Israel but to a Western way of life.

The returning main character in Silva’s stories is Gabriel Allon, a skilled Israeli spy who also works in art restoration. He becomes involved in his latest adventure partly because of his past restoration work.

A public forum on current French Anti-Semitism in Paris is bombed and most of its participants are killed including an expert from Yale and a woman who operates a Holocaust study institute in Paris. She was a French Jew who survived the German invasion as a girl. Her family owned an original Van Gogh painting that they managed to hide from Nazi looters. She had Allon do some restoration work on the painting. She had no immediate family, so she willed the painting to Allon because he knew about the painting and he was a fellow Jew who would appreciate it.

The perpetrators of the crime were eventually identified by security videos. One was a Belgian Muslim man, the other was a French woman who had converted to Islam and radicalized. A few other similar crimes all seem to be related. Allon and the French see a need for espionage. Eventually spies from Britain, America, and Jordan get involved.

Intelligence services from different nations do not cooperate because they enjoy it. They do so because, like divorced parents of small children, they sometimes find it necessary to work together for the greater good. (75)

Most of the story, though, is not about Allon but about the young Israeli doctor he recruits, Dr. Natalie Mizrahi. We get a blow by blow record of her training, especially how she comes to internalize her false identity of Dr. Leila Hadawi. Natalie’s family immigrated from France to Israel. She grew up speaking French and Arabic. She has become a medical doctor.

She goes to France and begins working in a clinic that serves a Muslim population in one of the Parisian ethnic neighborhoods or banlieues. Her story is that she had a radical boyfriend who was killed fighting for ISIS. Though she grew up in France, her family was from a Palestinian village that no longer exists.

French and Israeli intelligence services have learned that the ISIS mastermind behind these attacks calls himself Saladin. The nom de guerre clearly indicates his intent. The historical twelfth century Saladin conquered Crusader outposts in the Levant and expanded an Islamic caliphate.

Espionage like political takeover is a long game. Eventually “Dr. Hadawi” is recruited and travels to Syria for interrogation and training. While there, she is blindfolded and taken to a remote location where she helps a badly injured leader recover. Everyone calls him Saladin. As the story goes on, we appreciate Saladin’s intelligence and ruthlessness.

There are no particular ethical issues for Dr. Mizrahi tending to a terrorist. In Israel she often saved injured Palestinian terrorists. It is the Hippocratic Oath. Besides, this gains her the trust of Saladin and those who are looking to destroy both Little Satan Israel and Great Satan America.

In addition to French, Belgian, and Syrian terrorists, we meet an English ISIS recruiter. Eventually American ISIS sympathizers come into play. One American, for example, names his son Mohamed: Not unusual for any Muslim, except that he named him after Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks.

Throughout the story we get a sense of what it is like for both Jews and Arabs in Israel and in France. The tale describes various problems and causes for violence. As politicians are wont to say, there are no easy answers. Silva understands things.

The author paces this realistic tale well. We note two things that made us think of other works. The home of a high ranking Israeli government official sounds very similar to a house of a different Israeli official described in The Last Jihad. This book and the very last one we reviewed both have devastating terrorist attacks on Washington, D.C. Both attacks are plausible. As the apostle wrote on numerous occasions: mē genoito! May it never be!